Exploring the relationship between gender and food stress in international students

Acculturative stress can be a big problem for international students. Among the adaptation difficulties they may face, adjusting to new foods in a new environment is crucial to their wellbeing. Existing studies related to dietary acculturation point at gender differences, mostly on objective health impacts. Using the information processing approach, this study aims to examine the subjective perception of dietary acculturation difficulties, with a focus on the influence of social connectedness. Using the Bayesian inference approach with the Hamiltonian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique on a sample of 268 students from a Japanese international university, we found that female students are more likely to have perceived difficulties in the process of adjusting to new foods, but social connectedness lessens this effect. We also found no significant differences between domestic and international students regarding perceived difficulties of food adjustment in this study site, likely due to its highly multicultural environment. We suggest international universities provide better information about the food situations on campuses, especially for female students, and organize more cultural exchange events and food-related social activities to help students overcome barriers of food stress.